


Wendy Bird

by greyzone



Category: Peter Pan & Related Fandoms, Peter Pan (2003), Peter Pan - J. M. Barrie
Genre: Canon, F/M, Neverland, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-26
Updated: 2018-07-03
Packaged: 2019-03-24 08:35:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13807503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greyzone/pseuds/greyzone
Summary: Wendy is a grown-up. It's the night of her debutante ball, and her world of knee socks and mathematics is swiftly replaced by a dash to marry her off as soon as possible. But what about the boy who haunts her dreams at night, the boy who just might have grown up alongside her?





	1. Wendy Bird

In the billows of the white skirts, I saw Cinderella. Aurora lied in the soft buttery curls arranged over the suddenly bare shoulders. The lips painted red spoke of nothing but Snow White, the breadcrumbs clinging to the hands reminded me that I was no more a woman than Gretel.

  
That night, I was a living, breathing fairy tale, pruned to perfection for the devouring of the public. But in the murky gray-blue waters of my eyes in the looking glass, I saw nothing but Hook.

  
"Wendy - Oh, dear, they never do listen. Up!" My mother was much more of a queen than I, her back straight, hair swept up regally on her head, full bosom heaving in and out of her bodice as her anxiety mounted. It should be her night. But she would reside in the shadows, smiling, placing her hand in the paws of men who would never meet her face.

  
"Come, darling, we don't have much time." She drew me up with the tenderness of an innocent first kiss. "You will not be able to fasten your dress if this isn't tighter. I told them this."

  
My eyes drifted shut as she brought me to to the bedpost. "Mother, I'm not used to wearing them, and they know that too. I cannot faint!"

  
"You also cannot have your back out for all of London to see," she muttered as she started yanking the stays tighter with more strength than her small hands should've possessed. "I know it hurts, lamb. That's the cost of it all."

  
I whispered, "Of what?" She always spoke of these costs, these sacrifices, these duties that must take place. When would I be old enough for her to give these monsters names?

  
"The cost of being a woman," came her soft reply as she gave a particularly mighty yank to constrict my body enough. "The price is high and the tangible rewards are few, but it is a burden that you may share with your aunts and cousins and sisters, blood or not. We have a kindred spirit that men do not find amongst themselves."

  
Her words didn't stick in my mind as she floated toward the dresser. "Wendy," she began again. "I could never count how many times I prayed for a girl. With how many brothers your father has, I knew the boys wouldn't trouble us, someone to pass along the family name." She returned with a dark velvet box. "But I yearned for a daughter, and I knew that my heart would never be satisfied with only scratched knees and torn breeches and toy soldiers. You, my angel, with your petticoats and hair ribbons and creative mind and tender heart is what makes this life rewarding."

  
Such confessions never came from my mother's mouth, and she always kept it in perfect check. Yet here she was, spilling her heart's desires as she clasped a heavy and cold sapphire necklace around my throat. "You are supposed to wear family jewelry tonight." She paused to press a kiss against my powdered cheek. "We are not wealthy no matter the airs your father puts on, but this is one thing of value I may give you."

  
"It's beautiful," I whispered even though I cursed the weight on my chest.

  
"Come, we could go on like this forever." She forced a smile onto her lovely face, untouched by grueling time and the smog of London. "I am sure that Charles is waiting for you."

  
Charles, a respectable boy who didn't have anyone richer to escort to the debutante ball. Charles, the boy who dipped the ends of my braids in his inkwell when my mind caught on Neverland for too long. Charles, the boy who kissed me on the lips as if he was stealing something precious and he would be slapped on the wrist with a ruler after. Why would he think that he wasn't the first to snatch it?

  
"Mother, I - "

  
She stopped me before I could say anything more. "Hush. I understand. This is something you must do. I was presented this way, as well as your grandmother, her mother, and her mother before her. It is simply the way it is. Now, you can decide to hold your chin up high and be the radiant girl I love so, or you can sulk in the corner, mourning boys who never grew into men."  
Goosebumps prickled my arms at her words. How many times had she denied my longing for understanding in front of father, assured me that it was nothing more than childish dreams as she petted my head? "So you do believe?"

  
"I don't just believe, I know," she told me, her eyes growing distant as they watched mine, always through the mirror. "But you are finally a woman, my Wendy bird. That's what we're celebrating tonight."

  
My chest tightened at the nickname that I hadn't heard since the boys outgrew our adventures. The adventures that I clung to while I was supposed to be a grown-up. "Mother, I'm not ready," I whispered. "I'm not ready to be a wife, to be a mother."

  
"Life doesn't wait for our readiness." Her eyes broke away from mine and she paced to collect my brand new shoes from their box. "You know how painful it was for your father to pay for all of this finery. Enjoy it tonight. You deserve it."

  
My body was foreign as I took in the ivory fabric, clinging to my slim waist and breasts propped up like centerpieces on a banquet table. I couldn't fathom the hours that some woman took to embroider such detail on a gown that people would only view for a few hours. "I wish I could wear this as a wedding gown, too. It seems so frivolous to put this away and never see it again."

  
"Ah, see, you are not a child anymore after all." My mother bent to one knee to slide the heeled slippers onto my feet as I took in the intricate swoops of her hair. "You will have another beautiful dress for that too." When she rose as regal as a queen, she brushed one more kiss against my forehead. "Come. Charles might be dead if we leave him with your father for too long."

  
I felt like a child playing dress up as I descended the staircase behind her. She floated, her neck like a swan, while I focused on not tripping. My schoolgirl skirts did not prepare me for this.

  
"There you are, Wendy. I thought you escaped out the window." Father's voice was cold as he placed a close-mouthed kiss against Mother's hand. "We shall be late if we don't leave now."

  
Mother's eyes found mine and gave me a knowing look I saw women exchange from the times I was young enough to notice it above my dolls' heads. But I'd never received it.

  
"You look beautiful." Charles's voice cracked a little when he offered me his arm. He was like grape cough syrup, and I tried to hide my grimace as I swallowed the sickly sweet words.

  
"Thank you." His dark brown hair was swept back and neatly parted for the occasion, but he looked as out of place in his suit as I did in my gown. We were mere children putting on airs of refinery, and I was sure that both of us would be longing for a pat on the head and a warm glass of milk before the night ended.

  
Mother filled the stale air in the carriage with pretty and trivial comments, and I tried not to notice how Charles's thigh pressed against mine with every jolt on the road.

  
After he tried to help me out onto the ground, Mother rested her hand on my arm one more time. "Remember, they are watching you." She smiled through her warning. "This is your chance to find a husband, a good man who will treat you well for all of your days." She stopped when Father took her arm. "I love you, Wendy."

  
"Stop babying the girl," he cut in as he strode toward the doors. "She's a woman now, and hopefully we'll finally have some young men knocking on our door."

  
My throat bobbed with a hard swallow at the comment. "I like you, Wendy," Charles offered. I wanted to punch him. "I don't think you're strange."

  
That's what counted as a compliment when you were Wendy Darling.

  
I couldn't formulate a response for him, and I could feel him wilting at my side as the night progressed. Each girl lovelier than the next, each smile tighter than the one before. I could scarcely take a full breath with the stays cutting into my ribs and I was weighing the consequences of pretending to faint so I could leave when my eyes caught on him.

  
Him. The face that blinked over me every night in my dreams. I would do nothing but sew on shadows for the rest of my life if it meant that I could have one more night with him. The figment of my imagination, the demon who branded me as odd from that first night onward. He hardly looked like himself, but I would recognize that face anywhere. Stubble coated the jaw that was once soft, the nose was longer, cheekbones stronger, shoulders so broad and legs arrestingly long. But those eyes, those eyes hadn't changed a bit.

  
"Peter." I didn't realize that the words escaped from my lips until Charles's head snapped toward me. "Peter!"

  
I glided toward him as if I was a woman possessed, my steps small beneath the pounds of skirts confining me, keeping me from him. "Peter!"

  
There was a flicker in his eyes when he pretended that he hadn't been looking at me the entire time. He was never good at feigning surprise.

  
In my dreams, he swept me up in his arms as if I was still small. He sprinkled pixie dust over my head and brought me crashing through the ceiling. Lately, those hands brushed over my lips and down my throat and found the place between my thighs that ached for him as much as my heart craved his companionship. The way he looked at me then made me feel the crushing guilt for every moment spent in agony, lusting over every bit of his body tanned from the sun.

  
But his face was pale.

  
And when I opened my arms, he snapped, "Wendy, what have you done to yourself?"


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wendy finally confronts Peter after years apart.

The hours I spent dreaming of reuniting with Peter were ripped to shreds like how my father tore apart my fairytale books when we returned from Neverland. Those eyes - I thought they were the same, but the eyes I knew never would've taken in my face with such distaste, such horror. "What are you talking about?" I whispered, my skin crawling at the sight of him in a suit. He never belonged in a suit.

  
"Look at you. You're a…a grownup!" He might as well have called me a curse word for all of the disgust packed into the one word.

  
"Look at you!" My pulse hammered in my throat and I wished no more than anything that this corset was off of me, that he couldn't see my long fingernails and full breasts and face that was no longer round. "You're…you're a man!"

  
His jaw twitched, and he leaned closer to me before pulling himself back. "You have no idea what I've gone through to get here, Wendy."

  
I wished the sound of my name coming from his lips didn't send shivers down my spine. "What are you talking about? Why are you here?"

  
"They're - they were going to marry you off! I won't stand for it." He shoved his shoulders back and puffed out his chest, but the effect was so different from when he was a scrawny boy clad in nothing but leaves. It was adorable and heartwarming back then. Why did I feel like vomiting as he did it now? "That's not fair!"

  
"Peter -" I whipped around to make sure that Charles hadn't followed me. His face was as white as biscuit dough. I knew then that it was only a matter of time before they started whispering about me again. They can only forget for so long. "Peter, come. We can't argue out here."

  
He whipped around and stalked out in front of me even though there was no way that he knew where he was going. "I'll never forgive you for this," he informed me, the heels of his dress shoes clipping on the polished floors of an empty hallway.

  
"Forgive me for what?" In my dreams he was charming and suave, he whispered sweet nothings in my ear and promised to save me from the fate of being a well-to-do English woman who resented every moment that she was still alive. "What have I done to you? You're the one who left me here with these insufferable people!"

  
He turned to face me, and I could've wept at the sight of those eyes. How many times had I drawn them in the margins of my primers? I realized then that I didn't quite master the slope of his eyelid, the way it was flatter in the center before gently curving outward. How could I have forgotten that detail? "For…growing up!" He finally retorted, even though redness was spreading up from his collar to his face.

  
"And what do you think you are?!" I wanted to taste the skin where his heartbeat leaped. "Peter, you're a man!"

  
"Don't say that!" For a moment I thought he would burst into tears with the way his lip quivered. "I am not a man."

  
I ran my lower lip through my teeth as I took him in. "You parted your hair," I began, my voice catching. "Your nose isn't too big for your face anymore. Your jaw is square, Peter, you have a beard. Or, well, part of one. You're taller than me!" Oh, how many hours had I spent sunken into one hip to look shorter than him? Now I scarcely reached his chin!

  
"I am not a man," he repeated, and I could hear a hitch of boyishness despite the new lower register of his voice. "I am not a man, Wendy!"

  
"Did you leave Neverland?" I whispered. I hadn't said the word aloud in years, and it sent goosebumps up my bare arms.

  
He couldn't look at me, and he took a sudden interest in the portraits constrained by ornate gold frames on the walls. "Neverland isn't the same as you remember it, Wendy. It's…it's lost its heart."

  
"So you were there." I could never picture him living in the real world, trying to get along in society. He used to hate that word, society.

  
"Yes," he admitted as if it pained him to say so. "But Neverland has lost its mother, Wendy."

  
"I was nothing but a child," I whispered, shocked by how my eyes welled with tears at his words. "I was no one's mother. Just a silly school girl playing a part that scared her so she could overcome her fear."

  
Then, he touched me for the first time. It was barely perceptible to the naked eye, the way that his pinkie brushed mine. But I felt the currents all the way through my body. "I don't know what happened." Since when did he admit ignorance or incompetence? "But it just wasn't the same once you, John, and Michael returned. First, it was losing my teeth. Then it was…this awful hair. And then my voice. And then the dreams. And suddenly none of my clothes fit anymore, and I wasn't smart enough to keep your thimble and thread to make new ones. Like I could even make new ones!"

  
I held out a hand to stop his rampage. "The dreams?" Maybe there was a reason that I spent every night with him once I closed my eyes. Maybe there was still magic left between us.

  
"Wendy," he barked and coughed into his elbow. "I'm not talking to you about my dreams. It's not fit for a lady's ears."

  
A lady. The word made me recoil from him, out of the moonlight streaming down from the window in the ceiling. "So now I am a lady, a delicate plaything that must be kept from the secrets of the world."

  
"That's not what I mean," he retorted, joining me in the shadows. "You know that's not what I mean. You're special, Wendy. There's a reason that nothing worked like it was supposed to after you left."

  
I clasped my hands behind my back to hide how they shook. "Who took care of you when I was gone?"

  
"No one." There was no malice or resentment in his words. "But once a mother spoils you, it's hard to go back to the way it was before."

  
I don't want to be his mother. Please, don't let him think of me as a mother. "Why did you return?" I whispered, the words echoing back to me in the drafty hallway.  
"Tink," he admitted. "She told me what was happening to you."

  
"So you had Tink spy on me?" My chest started to constrict in panic. What had she told him about my life after Neverland?

  
"It's just Tink," he defended. "She's better at hiding from parents in bedrooms than I am, at least now. I just wanted to make sure that you were alright. And," he stammered immediately. "John and Michael. Them too."

  
I bit, "Well, I'm fine." How could he send his fairy on me and wait until now to return? "And I'm grown up whether you like it or not, alright? I can't be childish forever."  
He raised his eyebrow at my upturned nose. "You really are a girl, after all."

  
Why did that feel like an insult all of a sudden? "You still haven't told me why you came tonight! This is the most important night of my life!" Was it? "I'm supposed to be finding a husband, dammit, and I'm trapped back here with you!"

  
Suddenly, he grinned. "So you are not so much of a refined little lady after all. Good."

  
"Stop it!" The grin only widened at my protests. "I'm supposed to be finding a husband. I have to let you go, Peter."

  
He sobered up a little at that. "Why? You're so young. You don't have to rush off to meet your terrible fate like this."

  
"Well, there's nothing I can do about it, is there?"

  
He opened his mouth to respond but stopped when the heavy door swung open. "Wendy!" My father barked. "What is going on here?"


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After the confrontation is interrupted, Peter and Wendy dance together again.

"Father!" My blood ran cold as I took in his red face, his bent strides as he paced toward me. "Father, what are you doing?"

  
He gripped my arm so tightly that his fingers pressed into my flesh. "What are you doing, shut in here, alone with a boy?" I could see the flames in his eyes and practically read his mind. Are you embarrassing me again? We'll be the talk of the town by morning! Why can't you ever just be a good, normal girl?

  
"Wait," I whispered, desperate to keep him calm. What would Peter do if he got out of hand? "This isn't a stranger. Father, meet Peter. Peter…father."

  
Peter didn't outstretch a hand like I hoped he would. "George," he greeted him with a curt nod.

  
"Mr. Darling," he immediately corrected. "You are to call me Mr. Darling and nothing else. Now tell me right now, young man, why you think it is appropriate to take my daughter into a hallway by yourselves? Someone else escorted her, and I expected her to be with him."

  
Peter's ruddy eyebrows arched up. Please, please don't say anything. "Wendy and I are old friends," he told him with a nearly challenging look on his face. "I've never hurt her, and I'm not going to start that now. If you would feel safer with my arm on her waist dancing in front of all of those people, I would happily oblige."

  
Father just blinked as if he had stunned him. "Who - just who do you think you are? Watch your mouth, young man. How do you know my daughter?!"

  
Before Peter could give another curt response, I cut in. "You know when we used to visit Aunt Lucinda at the shore? While you were so busy playing cards and smoking with the men, the boys and I would play with Peter and his friends." It was an easy lie. Why not throw in a little truth to solidify it? "They enjoyed my stories, and we would play all sorts of games. Pirates, Indians, and mermaids - it was easy with the ocean right there! Oh, how I miss that salty air - "

  
He cut me off with a shudder. He never had the patience for my chattering, which I had discovered as soon as I learned how to talk. "You should not have been playing with boys anyway. Why always the boys, Wendy? Can't you ever find any nice girls? You could learn a few things from them, from William's daughter Helena and her friends."

  
Helena. Helena, who got drunk on peppermint schnapps at finishing school and let a boy have his way with her in a canoe. "Of course, father. Peter and I were just leaving." Peter's eyes flashed at me over Father's head. Be brave, Wendy. Like you were. "But of course, I would love to dance with him."

  
Father grumbled something about girls these days, not even waiting for boys to ask them anything, but my mind only had room for the thought of Peter's hand on my waist as he threatened. What would he think of the dip there, the difference of my hips that were so narrow the last time he saw me?

  
"Why did you lie to him?" Peter questioned as soon as we were out of that hallway. Of course, he could never understand. He didn't care what other people thought of him. He never felt the need to stay in his place. He didn't feel the pressure of being the eldest child of a man desperate to climb every rank known to London. What did he have to lose?

  
But what I told him was, "Life wasn't easy after we returned, Peter. There's no use in bringing up that pain again."

  
I saw the confused look on his face reflected in an ornate mirror on the wall, but I couldn't stand it. That boyish face, filled with disregard for his surroundings, trapped in the body of a man. "Dance with me," I murmured, and he did. Maybe he'd grown up if he could stand to do anything that someone asked of him.

  
First, I focused on the beautiful floors. Then the formal portraits on the wall, the intricate arrangements of flowers arranged in vases that cost what my father made in a year. Then the swirling yards of white fabric, the titillating laughter of girls desperate to secure a husband while they were still young. "You really don't know how to dance at all." He just blinked at my words, and I guided his hand to my waist before taking his other. "Here. You need to look like you've led someone before." 

"This isn't the first time that we've danced together, Wendy," he reminded me, the chandeliers casting a warm glow on the planes of his face.

  
What caught in my mind at the memory was the laughter. Our shrieks of joy as I flew again, clinging to his neck like a child. It was simple, comfortable, and effortless, the way that our bodies found each other clad in nothing but nightgowns and leaves. His hand on me wasn't dirty anymore, and his breath didn't smell of overripe fruit. There was no laughter.

  
"But this is the first time that we've danced for other people," I whispered, sweeping my skirts out from underneath his shoes. "Now, it matters. It isn't just for fun. Listen to the music, focus on me, and it will come."

  
He'd always had natural rhythm, and he'd always been light on his feet. He was a vision whooping and hollering around a crackling campfire. He was an angel dashing around the air with a sword as if it was born in his fist.

  
But in a waltz, he was nothing more than a boy.

  
"Just hold me," I whispered, ducking my head so he couldn't see how my eyes filled with tears. "We're never going to be normal, neither of us."

  
"Why would you ever want to be normal?" He scoffed, his hand tightening around my back. "You haven't been normal one day in your life. I don't know when you bought into the idea that you had to be."

  
When I didn't respond, he raised our joined hands and spun me under his arm. "Do you ever have fun anymore?"

  
And suddenly, under the scrutinizing gaze of everyone who mattered in London, he grabbed hold of me and started whirling me around like the only music was Tiger Lily beating on a drum for us alone. "Peter!" I shrieked, my voice echoing back to me as he took the lead and pranced me around. "Peter, not here!"

  
But the world melted away when he carried me. I could've been flying again, to a world that didn't expect me to have mastery of pouring tea. His arms were even stronger than they were before, his adult teeth white and strong every time he flashed me that familiar smile. I wanted to brush my fingertips over his eyelashes, twist the strands of his soft hair for an hour.

  
"That is quite enough!" The words sliced through my heaven as Father yanked me out of his grip.

  
"George, George -" Of course my mother was right there in the shadows, invisible until we needed her. "George, they were just dancing."

  
The look he gave her could've boiled frozen water. "She was making fools of us, Mary! Why do you indulge her so?! She is a grown lady, not a little girl anymore! You perpetuate this behavior! If I didn't know you better myself, I would think that you were just as crazy as her!"

  
Mother's mouth snapped shut, and I'd never seen such a vulnerable look in her eyes as if she was a lamb who accidentally saw the knife at her throat. "Do not speak about my daughter that way," she whispered, and time froze when he reeled back to slap her across the cheek.

  
I waited for someone to save the queen who gave birth to me, for someone to sweep us away from him where we didn't have to play his games. But everyone just watched.

  
"We're leaving," he growled, trying to grab both of our elbows as if we were unruly children.

  
"Father, I want to stay," I whispered, my meek voice catching on the words.

  
He snapped, "You have already done enough, Wendy. Don't you see how tired your mother is?"

  
Wasn't this the time when Peter unsheathed his sword and slew the villain? I was teetering on the edge of the plank, rope digging into my sides, and he was just standing there as the choppy waves rose to lap at my feet.

  
"We are leaving," Father repeated, snarling at Peter's hand still on my waist. "And you are not seeing this boy again. I am your father, and you listen to me."

  
Peter just stared at me when I turned back to him. "You should go," he whispered. And at that moment, I knew that I had lost my Pan.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taking place four years earlier, Wendy recounts the tumultuous days after returning from Neverland.

_Four Years Earlier_

“I heard that these criminals kidnaped her and they abused her so badly she went crazy.”

The whispers were never quiet enough for me to believe that I wasn’t supposed to hear them. I sunk lower in my desk chair, cheeks flushed with heat. Colors seemed too harsh, every sound buzzed in my ears, and I couldn’t stay warm no matter how tightly I wrapped my sweater around my body.

“Well, I heard that she ran away with some older boy and the police pulled her from his basement kicking and screaming.”

  
 _Please_ _rescue me. Please don’t make me stay here._ I would’ve sacrificed anything if it granted me safety from their acquisitory stares and fake pity. The pats on the back, the one-armed hugs, the promise to spend time together soon. I hadn’t been invited anywhere since the return. It didn’t work that way. Once anyone thought that you ran away with an older man, no mothers would ever let you cross your doorstep.

  
“Miss Darling?” My blood ran cold in my veins when I saw my name leave the teacher’s lips. “What is the answer?”

  
There was no kindness in his steely gray eyes, his hooked nose, the harsh bend of his glasses. Of course, he couldn’t repeat the question for me. I knew what was going to happen before he did anything, and I slid my piece of paper under my arithmetic book. Sure enough, he stalked over, each stride longer than the last. “Miss Darling, you are not paying attention in my class again. It seems as if our conference did not help you find your focus. Let me see your notebook.”

  
My face burned, and my throat went dry at what this meant. I would be raked over the coals for their selfish viewing yet again, and the whispers would only grow louder. “Do not make me ask again, Miss Darling.”

  
I watched my hands move the textbook. I wouldn’t disobey him, but I would rather die than lift the notebook for him and everyone around me to see it better. Usually, it was stories scrawled in the margins of old assignments, but words didn’t come to my brain and tongue with ease anymore. So I resorted to pictures, which were much more incriminating pieces of evidence. No one ever cared much to read stories.

  
It was of a boy, hair disarrayed in wild curls and a grin on his face. Freckles dusted his nose, and his limbs were long and lean, wrapped with bands of muscle like at the end of the summer. The last time I saw that grin was on the Jolly Roger, accompanied soon after by a joyous whoop of victory. I hadn’t heard laughter since.

  
“Miss Darling,” he began, milking my misery for all it was worth. “Who is this boy?”

  
I sunk lower in my seat, hands disappearing inside the sleeves of my sweater. I would rather a horse crushed them than answer that cruel man. He didn’t care, as long as everyone knew he was in charge. Nonetheless, he continued, “Miss Darling, I do not like repeating questions.”

  
“He’s her lover,” a boy snickered from the corner, and Mr. Taylor’s head whipped around to glare at him. And yet, there was never a word spoken against any of them who taunted me.  
“Miss Darling, I ask one more time,” he repeated as if I could ever forget that he was talking to me.

  
When I didn’t answer, there was no point in waiting. I rose from my chair and walked to the front of the classroom with as much dignity as I could manage. I offered the ruler to him myself and extended my hands, so small and pale.

  
“You wicked girl,” he snapped as he yanked the tool from me. “You will learn to speak when you are spoken to, or you will not be welcome at this school again.”

  
And suddenly, I could find words. “Good,” I whispered, just loud enough for him to hear.

  
The only sound that followed was the resounding whack, and my hands were no longer white.

-

“George, you must do something,” my mother whispered as she spread a chilly salve over the marks from Mr. Taylor. It happened so often that my hands never healed before the next punishment. “Wendy cannot be walking around town like --”

  
“Hush, Mary,” my father snapped as he paced before the fireplace, clouds of smoke from his pipe wrapping around his head. “Hush! Let me think.”

  
I thought I saw a tear drip from my mother’s eye, but she bent her head to care for my hand before I could be sure. Her hair was the color of the soft caramels we would eat in the summer, each tendril so carefully placed on top of her head. Did father ever notice how much time she spent on it?

  
“What are we to do with you, Wendy?” He snapped, staring at me as if I was a curiosity in the circus. “Your brothers are adjusting well.”

  
Michael cried every night and John was suddenly infamous for bringing girls behind the school building for a moment alone. But he continued, “Their marks in school are fine, and their teachers never complain about them. What am I supposed to think when you come home with new marks from Mr. Taylor every single day? Do you ever consider what this means for me at the bank?!”

  
“George, please,” my mother whispered, her chest heaving in and out of her bodice as her panic rose. I suddenly wished I was young enough to rest my head against it once more. “You cannot allow this man to keep disciplining our child so --”

  
“I said quiet!” He snapped, and the snarl on his face suddenly reminded me of Hook. “You must learn your place, woman, she hears you speaking to me like this --”

  
“Father.” He whipped around when he saw John standing in the doorway. I didn’t know when my brother grew so old. His face was gaunt and pale, his jaw stronger, his chest starting to fill out. His voice had started to drop, and father finally stopped to listen when he spoke. “This is not mother’s fault. Let us have a nice dinner, alright?”

  
Father mumbled something under his breath about how we had no respect for him, but sure enough, he strolled toward the dining room.

  
“Listen, sweet girl,” Mother began, her voice quick and desperate as she took my face in her hands. “I know how you hurt. Please, Wendy, please. Focus on all that you have here. You are not alone.”

  
“Mary!” Father barked again. “Mary, I will not have her postponing dinner too. If my roast is cold --”

  
“It will not be,” she assured him. I watched her glide over, press an impossibly soft kiss against his cheek, and whisper something in his ear. Father’s face visibly relaxed, and he made a small noise of approval before disappearing into the dining room.

  
How could she have such power over him? If I had kissed Peter, he would have been a raving lunatic, swiping at his face as if my lips were diseased. So how did father melt?

  
“Come.” John offered me his arm. “You will never survive until you learn to play their game, Wendy bird.”


End file.
